My name is Emily, I’m a music producer, artist and DJ who plays under the name Jamilla. My music journey started with me playing guitar and singing in my bedroom when I was a kid. Music was always a huge part of my life, growing up. My dad had a pretty amazing DJ career throughout his younger adult life and both of my parents have a love and respect for music that I observed and took on. I loved music and loved learning how to create it but it began as a very private experience that I didn’t like sharing with many people, right up until my late teens.

After I finished high school, I decided to study music at TAFE which started me on the journey of choosing music as a career pathway. I lived in a little beach town in the south of Perth at the time so attending this course meant I was traveling an hour away from home, spending more time in the city and meeting more like-minded people. Shortly after I started the course I moved into my own place, closer to the city and started going to local gigs two, three, four times a week. I was just so excited to finally live close to all the venues that I didn’t have access to before and I made the most of it. I met so many new people during this time and suddenly had all of these friends who were also wanting to make music a career. It was very exciting. But I was still just playing songs on guitar at this point. I knew I didn’t want to be a folk singer or the type of singer-songwriter that played acoustic guitar on stage but l had no idea how to make the type of music I wanted to make.

One night that really propelled me forward was when I met Rosie Taylor and Elise Reitze-Swensen, who are the creators and co-founders of WOMPP (Women Of Music Production Perth). I believe it was at a WOMPP showcase gig. I never knew that there were women in Perth creating their own electronic tracks and performing them live and it really shook something awake within me. I started attending WOMPP meetings which created a really stable foundation of basic production knowledge that I ran with by myself, in between meetings. I bought Ableton Live shortly after going to my first few meetings and then became a hermit for a couple of months, learning how to produce my own music. Within a few months I had a live set that I was ready to share and began playing gigs in Perth.

A short time after I started playing gigs around Perth, I met my incredible manager and things were pretty non-stop from the moment we started working together. I spent the first year or so playing every local gig I got offered, then began to get offers for bigger shows, supporting bigger artists and eventually started touring nationally myself and even played some international shows in 2019 just before the pandemic hit. It all happened very quickly and looking back on that time, it feels like such a whirlwind.

When the pandemic hit, my life and career (just like everyone else’s) came to a halt. I completely lost my whole income source (touring) and when Perth started opening up again, I realised I needed to find an alternative way to make a living. So, I took after my dad and started DJing in Perth which provided more frequent work and longer sets than live music. I didn’t know it would become such a huge part of my life when I started but for the past couple of years, I have been playing DJ sets two to four times a week and making a good living through it.

Now, I’ve reached a place where I’m ready to reprioritise live music again and am currently working on my debut EP which I’m very excited about!

My day-to-day varies quite a bit. My weekdays are more restful. I’ll generally have slow mornings where I’ll wake up slowly, drink coffee, exercise or read in the park next to my house. Then I’ll start work around midday which can be anything from writing music to answering DJ enquiries and emails to downloading tracks and doing DJ prep for the weekend.

Occasionally I’ll get a weekday DJ set here and there but they aren’t so frequent. Fridays are when my DJ ‘work week’ starts so Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon are usually chock-a-block with multiple DJ sets.

I think it depends what part of the industry you’d like to work in. I’m sure higher education is very important for people who’d like to work behind the scenes on the business side of the industry. But for what I do, I don’t think it’s necessary at all.

I think that if you’d like to improve your music theory skills or gain more confidence with performing in front of others, a music course can be helpful but I truly believe I learnt much more and gained much more from going to gigs, networking, spending time with musicians and producers that I looked up to and by teaching myself the skills I wanted to know in my own bedroom.

The main challenges I’ve come across in my own career have been burnout and writer’s block. Which come to think of it, were probably very intertwined with each other.

I approached my burnout problem by taking an extended amount of time away from music, not playing live gigs or writing. I used this time to rest, heal and build on my life, skills, hobbies, relationships outside of music.

As for the problem of writer’s block, I find collaborating helps! Letting someone in to observe your craft, to bring fresh ideas, to give their own advice or to give you the opportunity to work on something of theirs!

In terms of live music, I really look up to Greentea Peng, Mahalia and IAMDDB – all incredible artists from the UK. And in terms of DJing I see Half Queen (NZ) as a huge inspiration.

Adrian Dzvuke, Beckah Amani and Alter Boy!

Next year’s going to be a very exciting one, I’m currently writing my debut EP which should be released in the first half of 2023. After taking such a long break and only DJing for a long time, returning to playing regular live shows is something I’m so deeply looking forward to.

The lows of my career have been during the times that I’ve had really severe writers block and felt unable to produce anything that I’m proud of. It really messes with your identity and self-esteem as an artist when you feel like you’ve lost your flow!

One of my greatest achievements was the release of my song Bloom and the accompanying music video. I wrote that song about my experiences being a black woman and put a music video together with a whole team and cast of POC women. It was such a beautiful process and a huge achievement to me, to make something so genuine and close to the heart but also something I was creatively proud of.

My incredible manager, Hayley Ayres. Her patience with me, her kindness, her unwavering belief in my music. She’s done nothing but support me in every decision I’ve made, even if the decision was to take a long break from music to work on myself. Not to mention her constant hard work behind the scenes applying for opportunities and funding that I wouldn’t otherwise know how to get! She is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met and has helped me more than anyone could ever know.

I believe that the lack of job/income security is a huge threat to artists and the industry as a whole. People are much more likely to find work in other industries with more financial stability after an extended period of trying to make a living through music because it’s hard living with uncertainty! All I can think of as a solution for this problem is more government funding, to artists directly, to venues so that they can pay people well, to grassroots labels, managers and events companies, etc.

Also, global pandemics. Those are huge threats to the industry!

I think my younger self would like to remind me to have fun! I used to play music in my room by myself, for myself which is very pure. Sometimes as an adult, I can get caught up in goals and results and hard work but I’m sure she’d like to remind me that actually, making music is the fun part. To enjoy process, not the results.

Yoga and reading are both activities that I need to do regularly, if not every day to feel like myself. I also think it’s very important to have one day, at least every few weeks with no plans or intentions; where you go through the day intuitively doing whatever you feel like doing from moment to moment.

This is an interesting question for people in creative industries. It’s extremely hard to keep firm boundaries with work/life balance when your bedroom is often your work space, your work is often in a hospo/party environment and sometimes you’ll write music for fun or for emotional release but sometimes you’ll sit down and work on a song in the way you’d work on a uni assignment. It gets all mixed up but I try my best to separate it in little ways. For example, I don’t drink at most of my DJ sets, I don’t answer emails after the sun goes down and I always leave Monday as a gentle/rest day after the weekend.

When I think ‘pick me up’ I think a trip to get bubble tea, a beach swim or having a wine in the sun with a friend.

Without Me by Eminem!